I was alerted to this particular “The Mann” / Naomi Oreskes Twitter situation in the screencapture below back in late April right at the beginning of my home residence upheaval, and only just today have a window of opportunity to offer some observations. Dr Michael Mann was quote-retweeting Oreskes’ tweet about a CNBC article which essentially implied fossil fuel money bought influence with Republican officials. Dr Mann, you might notice here, didn’t do anything to bolster his personal image with that tweet. This doesn’t work out well for Oreskes, either, or as it turns out, for her long ago “Merchants of Doubt” co-author Erik Conway.
I had originally intended to write a blog post concerning a related angle of political hypocrisy and – shall we say – ‘non-partisan science people’ back around late November 2022, complete with screencaptures of Naomi Oreskes’ then-current Tweets. But other blog post topics intervened. Back at that time, Twitter account holders across the far-left spectrum were livid about Elon Musk purchasing Twitter, with many celebrity figures threatening to leave the platform. Oreskes chimed in on that departure threat not once, but at least twice — while advertising purchase discounts to her followers for her latest book and prior book. Oh wait, there was a third time …
… but as she said, “principle has to prevail.” When you stand on your principles, by default, you must then disassociate yourself from any platform that’s the haven of white supremacists.
Meanwhile, on the same day as her November 23rd threat, she also revealed her opinion about gun reform. I knew of her political vitriol before in her account, on the fossil fuel industry along with other political topics, and a few brief keyword searches confirmed more of the same. I also had a brief look into Erik Conway’s Twitter account. He was even more vitriolic than Oreskes. I now wish I’d taken the time that day to get screencaptures of his tirades.
When I finally did have the time in late December 2022 to illustrate Oreskes’ and Conway’s unfettered political bias, I started my gathering of screencaptures with the two I knew of from Oreskes threatening to leave Twitter. My intent was to get a screencapture of Erik Conway’s threats and the defamatory accusations he hurled. But when I went into his account ……. POOF!
Give Conway credit for being a man of principle on his disdain of Twitter.
My blog post idea was put hold as a result.
Now, when I was alerted to the Tweet from Dr Michael Mann at the top of this blog post, I thought I might be able to compile a brief one with a zinger in it about Conway being true to his convictions concerning the ‘evil’ Elon Musk, while Oreskes … not so much. She never did leave. But when I went into Oreskes’ account to see what her latest political vitriol might be, I saw that her header photo had changed and that she was still referring to Conway’s account as though it still existed.
Guess what? Conway is back on Twitter. He rejoined in February. The very first tweet in his reappearance was on February 19, 2023 to re-tweet Oreskes’ announcement of the launch of her new book ….. the one she co-authored with him. This, on the very same day that Oreskes confessed, well, the benefits – (*ahem*) her new book promotion – outweighed the value of boycotting Musk’s Twitter.
And as I found out while assembling this post via a keyword search in her account, Naomi Oreskes announced Erik Conway’s reappearance one day afterward, noting that he had ‘lost all of his people.’
Longer term readers of GelbspanFiles will remember that I’ve mentioned it a few times now: two hallmarks of far-leftists are their psychological and their intellectual dishonesty.*
Erik Conway didn’t lose all of his followers, he wiped them all out when he deliberately deleted his account. As a man of principle.
Now he’s back, in utterly predictable form, while hawking his book, namely his latest venture with, ….. well, ….. who else but Naomi Oreskes, who basically launched his second career as a persecutor of skeptic climate scientists.
Maybe sometimes it really is just about the money.
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* (Erik Conway is not the least bit immune from this fatal fault. If you can stomach a 57 minute interview with him filled with intellectual dishonesty on steroids, listen to him describing the aim of his book, “The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market,” concerning the basically dishonest claim that American industrial freedom is based on unfettered, unregulated free market capitalism. Not only is the basic premise of the book intellectually dishonest, its anti-capitalist thrust is more or less an advocacy of state-run communism. But remember, the other name on his book is his co-author Naomi Oreskes, who absolutely bristled at being called a communist.)